Grand Central submitted its application to the Office of Rail and Road on May 15 to operate additional services on the East Coast Main Line.
The open access operator wants to run one additional Sunderland-King’s Cross train, an additional train between Bradford Interchange and London in the late afternoon, an early morning train from Wakefield Kirkgate to London that will arrive in the capital before 0730, and a ten-coach late-evening train departing London before 2200 that will split at Doncaster (with one part returning to Wakefield and the other continuing to York).
Grand Central also hopes to stop its early morning and late evening West Yorkshire route trains at Peterborough, as well as its two North East trains.
The additional trains will provide an extra 1,600 seats daily to and from London, with six return London-North East trains running, while West Yorkshire will have six trains running to London and five returning.
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AndrewJG8918 - 17/05/2018 20:22
What about Grand Central to operate a London KX-Scarborough, Hartlepool and Middlesbrough service and possibly London KX-Grimsby & Cleesthorpe. With Class 180’s from Hull Trains to be transferred when Hull Trains Class 802’s are been delivered and are to enter service next year. Or will Class 180’s from Hull Trains go to Crosscountry.
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AndrewJG8918 - 19/05/2018 10:02
The rest of the Class 180’s from Hull Trains are likely to be transferred to Grand Central and new services such as Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Harrogate and Scarborough could happen as Grand Central provides services from London to Bradford Interchange, Sunderland, Wakefield Kirkgate, Leeds and York.
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Duncan Wilson - 04/12/2019 22:14
Hi Andrew. You may know this by now, but the Hull Trains 180's are transferring to EMR in early 2020. Grand Central already serve Hartlepool with their Sunderland Services. Middlesborough is going to be served by LNER (frequency as yet unknown). Scarborough is possible, as is Cleethorpes, probably running as a 10 Car service splitting at Doncaster with 5 cars to Scarborough, and Cleethorpes respectively. I would say however, that while LNER have no current plans to run to Scarborough, I think its likely in the future. Probably replacing the bi-hourly Kings Cross to York terminating services, and running Kings Cross to York as a 10 car, splitting in York Platform 5 with 5 cars going to Scarborough, and 5 going to Middlesborough. Grand Central's best bet would be to run to Cleethorpes by running 10 cars from King's Cross to Doncaster with 5 each to Cleethorpes, and Bradford. Paths are not in abundance on the southern ECML, so existing paths must be uses while still increasing capacity, and serving new destinations.
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